To reduce the risk to human life, unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) are being developed for unpiloted, autonomous flight operations, such as surveillance or combat missions. Previously, drones were actively commanded and navigated with remote control during such operations or the vehicles were programmed to move according to a predetermined course.
UAV flight guidance systems are suited currently for formation flying, carrier landing, aerial refueling, and other common maneuvers.
Conventional navigation and guidance systems rely upon use of waypoints that are fixed in space and, typically, connected by straight line segments. This leads to ad-hoc modifications for guidance in turns, long linear queues for UAV and UCAV landing approaches that maximize the potential for dangerous wake vortex encounters, and excessively complex mission plans to achieve desired routes. Fixed waypoints are fundamentally incapable of effectively handling rendezvous problems such as carrier landing, aerial refueling, and formation flight, thus requiring separate modes for accomplishing each of these tasks. Other like conventional navigation and guidance systems are similarly limited by use of fixed waypoints or straight-line segments.
Thus it would be advantageous to design an improved flightpath guidance system and method for such applications as future unmanned vehicle systems and air traffic control systems.